The family of the man slain in the Dec. 11 shooting on Ashley Forest Drive has spoken out against a racial profiling complaint made in the shooting’s wake that day by a UNC student.
Stephanie Openshaw, sister of shooting victim Drew C. Frasure, 41, said reading about junior Cameron Horne’s complaint was a difficult experience.
“It was like pouring salt on the wound,” she said.
Horne said that police made him exit his car near Ashley Forest Drive at gunpoint half an hour after the shooting. He said he was handcuffed without explanation and questions the reason for his stop. Radio recordings released by the Chapel Hill Police Department shows officers describing the suspects as three white men and a dreadlocked black man in gold car. Horne, who does not have dreadlocks, said he was driving alone in a blue car.
Horne and Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue met Dec. 15 to discuss the complaint. Blue declined to comment on the conversation or the investigation, but Horne said the chief told him the officers who stopped him were following department policy.
In a statement emailed to The Daily Tar Heel, Openshaw thanked the Chapel Hill Police Department for quickly making an arrest in connection to her brother’s fatal shooting. On Friday, police arrested 26-year-old Mario Dante Ramsey on a count of first-degree murder. In the email, she also wrote about Horne’s complaint.
“Was it unfortunate that Cameron had to go through what he did?” she wrote. “Yes. But it was necessary, and as a citizen of Chapel Hill, he should understand that.”
“Cameron is playing the victim in this, he doesn’t GET to play the victim, we buried the victim Friday,” she wrote. The email was signed by her and several other family members including Frasure’s brothers, sisters, his parents and his two children.
“I’m not trying to minimize (Horne’s) experience,” she said, but she added that she felt Horne should be more forgiving towards the police doing their jobs in the search for Frasure’s shooter, she said.
